DAVID (under “Evidence for pattern development; mulling”): My intent upon being invited to this website was to challenge the concepts of atheism and agnosticism as negative approaches to the issue of "why is there anything", Leibniz famous question.
dhw: Much as I abhor militant atheism (just as I abhor religious fundamentalism), I think “totally negative in their approach” is a negative approach in itself.-DAVID: Perhaps I am too blunt in my statement, but not being able to reach a conclusion, to me is a negative result.-In that case you will have to call atheism a positive result.
 
DAVID: I understand that you faithfully study all sides, but agnostically cannot bring yourself to a conclusion. Being unable to commit, for me is a negative result.
Again, one up for atheism. But your claim was that atheism and agnosticism were a negative approach to the issue of why there is anything. One might therefore argue that both theists and atheists approach the subject with closed minds: one says the reason is God, the other that the reason is the behaviour of matter. Only the agnostic approaches the question with an open mind, and since when was open-mindedness a negative? -DAVID: I think there is enough evidence for the necessity of a first cause. That evidence says it must be supernatural, but it is unacceptable to you. Because you can't imagine it, or because you just don't want to believe it, or you demand more positive proof?-I agree that there has to be a first cause, but the evidence does not say it must be “supernatural”. It merely says that so far we don't understand what constitutes nature. The first cause may be mindless or mindful energy. It's true that I can't imagine it, or eternity or infinity, but that applies to both alternatives. “Not wanting to believe” is inapplicable, since I see no reason to believe either way. Deep down I do not believe positive proof is possible for either (“more positive” suggests we already have some positive proof, but we don't).
 
dhw: An atheist has made up his mind that there is no God, but that doesn't stop him from asking how we got here, or why there is something.
DAVID: But he insists on sticking to natural material causes, and won't admit to looking at anything else.-You insist on sticking to immaterial causes, and won't admit to looking at anything else. The agnostic keeps a positive open mind.
 
dhw: Agnostics may have made up their minds that they can never know whether there is or isn't a god, but they can still try to find out why there is something.

DAVID: But only if they (as you do) look carefully at all possibilities.-Of course. Most people probably couldn't care less.-dhw: Nobody knows the answers, but the one brand of seeker seems to me no more and no less negative than the other.
DAVID: We disagree in degrees of difference.-Ah, but that is only because you stubbornly insist on agreeing with yourself!

Leibniz's famous question, "Why is there anything?"-rom's little known question ... Why should there be nothing?-actually this question is paraphrased from Simon Blackburn.-And if Lawrence Krauss is right the whole universe does add up to nothing.

George:I didn't start out as an atheist.
> That would be begging the question. I felt it necessary to resolve the question and applied reason to the task and came to my conclusion.
> 
> No doubt some theists might claim to have started out from an open-minded rationalist approach, but in my experience they all tend to believe things because it's what they were taught by people they trusted and did not want to let down, as a result of their general cultural background. Mostly they admit this openly. They call it "keeping faith".-As I have explained before, as a kid I was taught there was a God. With medical school I became truly agnostic. With reading enough cosmology, particle physics, and then Darwin, I returned to my own form of belief in God, a God without religious attributes.

GEORGE: dhw writes: "Agnostics may have made up their minds that they can never know whether there is or isn't a god, but they can still try to find out why there is something." 
The question is what was the agnostic before he "made up his mind" to not make up his mind? 
Was he like me a rationalist - one prepared to examine the evidence for and against any proposition and to proportion his views to the evidence? Having done so I am led to the atheist conclusion, that all talk of gods and supernatural forces and transcendence and such like is hogwash. I didn't start out as an atheist.
That would be begging the question. I felt it necessary to resolve the question and applied reason to the task and came to my conclusion.
No doubt some theists might claim to have started out from an open-minded rationalist approach, but in my experience they all tend to believe things because it's what they were taught by people they trusted and did not want to let down, as a result of their general cultural background. Mostly they admit this openly. They call it "keeping faith". -
Delighted to see you back with us, George! David is always talking of Nature's balance - and we need your atheistic views to balance our discussions!-David regards his decision as being based on science (which I think one can safely call “rational”). You, George, say that your own decision is rational. I would say you are both right, though you come from different angles. You rationally dismiss the concept of an almighty, eternal consciousness for which there is no evidence, while David rationally dismisses the theory that chance could put together something as complex as a living cell that can reproduce itself and evolve into the organisms we know today. I find myself agreeing with both of you (while also taking into consideration other factors we needn't go into here), and so I sit on my fence.-My own background was that I was raised as a Jew, and as a child believed what I was told. In my early teens, I began to think for myself, and became an atheist. In my late teens, I read Origin of Species, thinking it would provide scientific confirmation of my atheism, and was flabbergasted to read numerous references to the Creator. (It was you, George, who alerted me to the differences between the first and later editions.) I was also shocked at Darwin's explicit refusal to speculate about the origin of life, which my atheistic self had taken for granted to be a stroke of luck. And so although I had concluded, like you, that gods were hogwash, I found myself confronted with the realization that the origin of life itself was a mystery, in which case the development of beings like ourselves from microorganisms suddenly became another mystery. And the more I looked into the problem of origins, the more mysteries I found, consciousness being a prime example. And so I see rational cause for NOT believing one way or the other (God, chance). It was a conclusion I reached in my late teens (only later did I discover that Darwin himself was an agnostic), and although I feel I have learned a great deal since, what I have learned has so far not clarified any of these major issues.


> 
> Tony: I think the issue is in how the questions are framed. 
> 
> A theist can examine purely how something was done and believe that God chose to do it that way regardless of the results. 
> 
> An Agnostic can believe or disbelieve whatever they choose, and the question of whether or not there is a God is of little importance.
> 
> An Atheist, however, has to disprove the existence of God AND prove that everything had to be possible WITHOUT God. 
> 
> Atheist, by definition, have to prove a negative.-Welcome back! Well thought out. Atheists choose to not have an explanation and rely on contingency and chance as reasonable causation. That non sequitor makes no sense to me.

TONY: I think the issue is in how the questions are framed. 
A theist can examine purely how something was done and believe that God chose to do it that way regardless of the results.-But we don't actually know how most things were done, and we even see results differently. We don't know how the universe, life, evolution (for those theists who believe in it) or consciousness originated. We see the results and try to work backwards: e.g. David sees humans and thinks they were God's preplanned goal, you see the millions of extinctions and interpret them as necessary precursors of God's purpose, whatever that may be, and I put on my theist's hat and see a higgledy-piggledy bush, which might suggest that God started it all off without knowing where it would lead. Nothing can be examined “purely”. Ugh, it's enough to drive anyone to agnosticism!-TONY: An Agnostic can believe or disbelieve whatever they choose, and the question of whether or not there is a God is of little importance.-It's not a matter of choice in my case. I simply don't know what to believe, because I don't find any of the explanations convincing. I don't think the existence of God is of little importance (I would scarcely have opened this website if I didn't have strong feelings on the subject), but I can enjoy my life without him, and if he exists and if I behave myself, I hope he won't object to that. I guess I'll owe him an apology, or I might join Bertrand Russell and ask: “God, why did you make the evidence for your existence so insufficient?”
 
TONY: An Atheist, however, has to disprove the existence of God AND prove that everything had to be possible WITHOUT God. 
Atheist, by definition, have to prove a negative.-If I were an atheist, I would argue that theists have to prove there IS a god! There is no default position here.